The Battle Of The Summer Islands : Canto 1 - Poem by Edmund Waller

What fruits they have, and how heaven smilesUpon those late-discovered isles.

Aid me, Bellona, while the dreadful fightBetwixt a nation and two whales I write.Seas stained with gore I sing, adventurous toil,And how these monsters did disarm an isle.

Bermudas, walled with rocks, who does not know?That happy island where huge lemons grow,And orange trees, which golden fruit do bear,The Hesperian garden boasts of none so fair;Where shining pearl, coral, and many a pound,On the rich shore, of ambergris is found.The lofty cedar, which to heaven aspires,The prince of trees, is fuel for their fires;The smoke by which their loaded spits do turn,For incense might on sacred altars burn;Their private roofs on odorous timber borne,Such as might palaces for kings adorn.The sweet palmettos a new Bacchus yield,With leaves as ample as the broadest shield,Under the shadow of whose friendly boughsThey sit, carousing where their liquor grows.Figs there unplanted through the fields do grow,Such as fierce Cato did the Romans show,With the rare fruit inviting them to spoilCarthage, the mistress of so rich a soil.The naked rocks are not unfruitful there,But, at some constant seasons, every yearTheir barren tops with luscious food abound,And with the eggs of various fowls are crowned.Tobacco is the worst of things which they To English landlords, as their tribute, pay.Such is the mold, that the blest tenant feedsOn precious fruits, and pays his rent in weeds.With candied plantains, and the juicy pine,On choicer melons, and sweet grapes, they dine,And with potatoes fat their wanton swine.Nature these cates with such a lavish handPours out among them, that our coarser landTastes of that bounty, and does cloth return,Which not for warmth but ornament is worn;For the kind spring, which but salutes us here,Inhabits there, and courts them all the year.Ripe fruits and blossoms on the same tress live;At once they promise what at once they give.So sweet the air, so moderate the clime,None sickly lives, or dies before his time.Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncursedTo show how all things were created first.The tardy plants in our cold orchards placedReserve their fruit for the next age's taste.There a small grain in some few months will beA firm, a lofty, and a spacious tree.The palma-christi, and the fair papaw,Now but a seed, preventing nature's law,In half the circle of the hasty yearProject a shade, and lovely fruit do wear.And as their trees, in our dull region set,But faintly grow, and no perfection get,So in this northern tract our hoarser throatsUtter unripe and ill-constrained notes, Where the supporter of the poets' style,Phoebus, on them eternally does smile.Oh! how I long my careless limbs to layUnder the plantain's shade, and all the dayWith amorous airs my fancy entertain,Invoke the Muses, and improve my vein!No passion there in my free breast should move,None but the sweet and best of passions, love.There while I sing, if gentle love be by,That tunes my lute, and winds the strings so high,With the sweet sound of Sacharissa's nameI'll make the listening savages grow tame - But while I do these pleasing dreams indite,I am diverted from the promised fight.